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News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Fri, 03/31/2017 - 7:50pm -- BHanley

Paulette Jiles' new novel News of the World will please readers who enjoy a good old-fashioned Western. 71-year-old Jefferson Kyle Kidd makes his living in 1870 Texas by reading newspapers to paying audiences in the various small towns along the road. He is asked to take a young girl back to her family in San Antonio, hundreds of miles to the south. She had been kidnapped by Kiowa several years earlier, was 'rescued' by white soldiers, had forgotten English, and seriously wanted to go back to her Native family. Captain Kidd was burdened with dressing her in (to her) strange clothes, providing her with strange food, and figuring out a method of communication. Along their way they encounter kind folks, bandits, hostile Natives. The book provides an interesting look at the post Civil War tensions in the West, and how ordinary people were living their lives.